Amid the turmoil of the last few months — from global
pandemic to racial
reckoning
— more and more fashion brands are eager to let the world know that the long and
slower-burning crisis of creating a livable, resilient, sustainable planet is
still top of
mind.
To keep strong the momentum of the circular fashion movement, we recently
created the 2020 Circular Fashion Pledge
as a program to engage small and medium-sized brands with a commitment to launch
at least one new circularity program in 2020.
Now, the Circular Fashion Pledge community is over 110 brands strong, with a
goal of engaging even more. These dynamic, energetic, innovative and committed
fashion brands are working together to share resources and learnings, and to
collectively grow the circular fashion movement. Inspired by other
industry-wide
movements,
the 2020 Circular Fashion Pledge aims to operationalize brands’ circularity
commitments.
Fashion brands enjoy significant benefits from turning their efforts toward
circularity.
Gauri Agarwal, cofounder of the India-based
MAGA brand (named for the initials of
Gauri and her sister, Mridu), wishes to appeal to a younger demographic that
demands sustainability solutions. But it’s far more than marketing appeal for
MAGA: Agarwal, herself a vegan, wishes to use her brand to spread awareness and
understanding of sustainable lifestyles.
For Rachel
Faller,
founder of zero-waste apparel brand tonlé, her personal
dedication to sustainability and equity is also a founding brand principle. One
of her driving questions, Faller told me, is: “What does a business look like
where everybody actually benefits?” This drives her quest to create, in her
words, “business models that benefit everybody and uplift everyone.”
Committing to the Circular Fashion Pledge requires brands to pledge one of three
concrete actions by the end of this calendar year:
-
Enabling take-back/resale: “By the end of 2020, launch at least one
method or partnership to enable your customers to send-back or resell their
used items.”
-
Increasing recycled content: “By the end of 2020, increase the total
percentage of certified recycled content or scrap fabric by 10-percent in
your top 5 selling items.”
-
Design for durability: “By the end of 2020, increase the use of
non-blended materials, and/or modularity and repairability in your top 5
selling items.”
Of 117 brands, 62 percent have pledged to enabling take-back/resale, 60 percent
to increasing recycled content, and 50 percent to design for durability; roughly
half have pledged to at least two commitments. Faller’s brand tonlé is one of
the 26 percent that have pledged to undertake all three commitments. These are
the statistics of the brand commitments to the Pledge, and some examples of the
brands making the commitments:
Brands are also encouraged to contribute to the community by sharing their
experiences, challenges and know-how with others.
Early in her career, when Agarwal first learned of the volume of waste produced
during garment manufacture, her first instinct was to leave the industry. But
then, as she tells me, she decided: “I’m already in the mud. Why not clean the
mud?” She started the MAGA brand by collecting leftover cotton & nylon from
others’ brands for her designs, leading to significant water and waste savings;
she is now working on making her garments entirely compostable.
Faller also sources only from post-industrial scrap. “Post-industrial” often
refers to deadstock or remnant fabric — that fabric left “on the roll” — which
can be the result of deliberate over-ordering by large brands in order to sell
the excess to smaller ones. However, truly post-industrial waste comes from cut
waste (the scraps resulting from cutting patterns out of fabric stock) and
quality control failures (finished garments that can’t be sold for some reason),
so Faller focuses on sourcing these types of waste fabric.
Faller is contributing her knowledge and experience with recycled materials to
the Circular Fashion Pledge community; in turn, she hopes to learn from others
further along in the resale commitment, as her resale pilot with Boomerang
ReCommerce is slated to launch later this
summer.
These two brands join other makers of garments, shoes and fashion accessories
who have taken the Circular Fashion Pledge, committing to take concrete action
in 2020 toward circularity. Our website serves as a platform to support the
brands’ circularity efforts with free
resources such as a Circular
Brand Resource Guide, Brand Sustainability Maturity Model and blog; and to
showcase brands’ successes on their circularity commitments through 2021 and
beyond.
If you’re working with a fashion brand interested in sustainability and circular
economy, you can join us to
pledge your commitment.
Both Agarwal and Faller hope that the 2020 Circular Fashion Pledge generates new
awareness of sustainability and circularity among consumers and brands. As
Faller says, the Circular Fashion Pledge “gives people a vision of what's
possible, while putting pressure on larger brands to do better.”
As Agarwal pointed out: “2020 is a year when the earth is giving our karma back
to us.” It behooves us all to work toward bettering our collective karma —
because we know everything comes full circle.
To learn more about the Circular Fashion Pledge, visit the website at
https://www.2020circularfashion.com.
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Adam has devoted his career to advancing sustainability, most recently by founding the 2020 Circular Fashion Pledge. He is the former SVP of Innovation, Research & Sustainability at the Retail Industry Leaders Association, where he built and led the Retail Sustainability Initiative and (R)Tech Center for Innovation.
Asheen has over a decade of corporate sustainability experience, including drafting the Aerospace sector guidance to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and co-developing the Handprinting for Innovation methodology. He formerly led sustainability efforts for the $3B software company Dassault Systèmes, named the #1 on the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations list by Corporate Knights in 2018, and serves on the board of Net Impact.
Published Jun 18, 2020 2pm EDT / 11am PDT / 7pm BST / 8pm CEST